Penny's new shine good for everyone?
The penny is now shining brighter than ever as recent increases in the cost of copper and zinc continue to push up its actual value, but that's not necessarily good news for the United States Mint. With the value of copper at $3.07 per pound and the price of zinc three times what they were in 2003 at $3,200 a ton, the government is spending more money to produce the copper coin adorned with Abraham Lincoln's image than it is actually worth. Right now, the market value of the zinc and copper within a single penny is valued at nearly 0.9 cents. And since it costs an additional 0.6 cents to manufacture a penny, according to the paper, the Mint is paying roughly 1.5 cents for every penny it makes. Historically, the United States government has used other metals to mint pennies in the past, as it did in World War II when they government ordered a switch from copper to steel to help with the war effort.
1 comment:
Who uses pennies anyway? I mean do we really need them, especially if we are loosing money on them? Let's think maybe we could just start making pennies out of plastic, like all of the board games, and then the government would be able to make the penny for what it is actually worth...plastic. With the rate of inflation that our country is experiencing and the shrinking of the dollar, it won't be long before the same situation happens on nikels.
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